Empathy should have been the word of the year, mainly because it was never more used or abused. Quiet civil wars unfolded within US Christian nationalist circles over who “deserves” empathy. From Catholic convert JD Vance to Bible-touting evangelical Charlie Kirk to Elon Musk, this was the year they started framing it not as a virtue, but as a weakness on immigration issues, social justice and LGBTQ+ rights.
Kirk, who was murdered in September, said he couldn’t stand the word, viewing it as “a made-up, New Age term that does a lot of damage, but very effective when it comes to politics”. Musk claimed it was being “weaponised” by the woke and called it the fundamental weakness of western civilisation. Vance tried to trap it in a distinctive Christian perspective by quoting St Augustine’s ordo amoris – the order in which you dole out your empathy – to justify inhumane treatment of undocumented immigrants.
Former taoiseach Leo Varadkar had an honest stab at untangling the word when he was accused of lacking empathy as a politician. It wasn’t that he lacked it, he said, but that his family kept their feelings “more private” than others, which led to him being quite reserved. This had advantages while working as a doctor when he had to deal with a patient who was dying in front of him while also speaking to their broken family, then minutes later dealing with someone complaining about a sore throat.
The disadvantages were revealed when, as a political leader, he was required to reflect the mood of the nation, and “performative empathy” – as he described it – was called for. He had to get over the sense of feeling “a bit fake” and it took a while before he understood that it wasn’t contrived – “that sometimes you have to show you care, otherwise people will think that you do not”.
READ MORE
It was a brave admission, since many believe that their doctors and politicians should have empathy in their genes. Doctors themselves regard it as their superpower, says Charlotte Blease, author of Dr Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us – and How AI Could Save Lives. Blease was interviewed by Joe Humphreys recently in The Irish Times.
But research says otherwise. “ ... when you’re juggling thousands of cases, empathy becomes performance. Most doctors are the least well-equipped professionals to deliver it consistently”. The “empathy problem” isn’t overstated, she said; it’s misunderstood. “AI won’t replace human warmth, but it can help ensure patients feel heard, supported and not lost in the system”. In a forced choice, which would you prefer?
At a time of terrible crisis in our family, a key hospital consultant who had to be chased down labyrinthine corridors for information finally delivered a cold, concise denial of hope to my questions about trials, operability etc. Over a few years of observing outcomes for similarly stricken patients, I’m now sure that his opinion was correct. I’m also sure that Dr Bot – or even a plank – would have shown more empathy and decency in delivering the news.
There is nothing mystical about empathy. Anyone – apart from sociopaths possibly – can learn it, because it’s a life skill that comes with practice. It’s not just about feeling for someone, but the valuable learned ability to understand and connect with their feeling and circumstances. It is also pretty obvious that most health professionals wouldn’t survive a week in the job if they were required to step into the shoes of every patient’s relative who is astray with grief and “feel” their pain.
A veteran medical consultant experiencing quiet daily terror about his own close relative’s illness once confided that for the first time he truly understood how his patients must be feeling. Yet deep kindness and compassion had always been the first qualities patients sensed in him. He managed to be a great trusted surgeon and a decent human being.
Dr Vincent Walsh was central to my in-laws’ medical care when I married into the family more than 40 years ago. In his 80s now and long since forced out of public general practice by GMS retirement rules, he continues to operate a busy private practice. In his waiting room – where one long-standing notice declares “Dr Walsh will not be retiring in the foreseeable future” – patients queue and give out while he gives that most precious of qualities to the patient in front of him: time. They stick with him because they know he will do the same for them. He has undoubtedly saved many lives. A few years ago, the skill and persistence that led him to diagnose my barely detectable but urgent heart issue left a cardiac specialist whistling in admiration.
[ The Catholic thinker behind JD Vance’s religious conversionOpens in new window ]
The point about Vincent Walsh is not just his empathy. It’s that it is inextricable from experience, compassion, instinct and the unquenchable medical curiosity of doctors half his age.
Used like that, empathy is the very antithesis of weakness. It’s possible that Vance and his pals are right at one level. Perhaps the word “empathy” should be banned, but only for as long as it takes to salvage it from wilful, crass and ignorant misinterpretation.
One of Pope Francis’s last public statements was to set Vance straight about empathy and the ordo amoris. “The ordo amoris is a rooting of love in justice. Neither mere empathy nor a concern for one’s own first; mercy involves perception of the other’s pain no matter whose pain it is. It is open to all, without exception.”
